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When you can’t

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Life with my autistic girl is teaching me to look for God in the moments.

To find strength when you’ve come to the end of yourself. To find laughter when you want to weep. To find love – somehow more love – when your heart is breaking. To find a song of gratitude when bitter discontent almost silenced you.

Some days, though, seem too hard, the distance too great. And I can’t sense Him near. Can’t see any good. Honestly, I just feel… duped.

But so much of the journey with a disability is marked by repetition. And the not knowing for sure when things will ever change… if we’ll get a vocal response, if he’ll take that first step, if she’ll manage in the bathroom on her own one day. By heart, with heart, we do what we do… as we’ve done every day.

So then. When I can’t feel Him, I’ll hold my hands out anyway. When He seems silent, I’ll cry out just the same, trusting He hears. And when I don’t see, I will keep searching, digging, learning what it really means to be faithful.

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9 thoughts on “When you can’t”

Everyone is surprised at my ability to look at the best of any situation. I, too, have been taught to by my life with an autistic son. What a gift we have been given, for no situation can be without hope now.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10
“And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Sometimes, in Ian’s repetitive, repetitive, repetitive day, I think about God, how He watches us repeat, repeat, repeat the same words, thoughts, actions, sins all day long. I think how He holds out His hands again, calls out our names yet again, sings yet another song to us, gives us new chances over and over and over. I am learning something of my own struggle to break out of patterns and learning still more of my dear Father’s precious constant love. I pray we can be that for our children, always giving them another chance, always there when they finally break out of the pattern. Run the race, friend. The prize is worth it.